Instant Expert & Gardening

The bug was a Crane Fly, otherwise known as a mosquito hawk. They don't eat mosquitoes like commonly believed, as their mouth parts are too soft to bite anything. They either eat pollen, or, like bees, eat nothing after reaching adulthood. Most Crane Fly species lay their eggs in the ground, where the larvae eat the roots of mainly turf grasses. Most species also rest with their wings outspread, which lead to my confusion. My Crane Fly is an aquatic species whose larvae reach adulthood under water. I am under the belief that, the strange orange crane fly was attracted by my pond, same as our now-resident dragonfly. Gods I love the internet. *grin* Instant expert strikes again! Thanks to a friend from The Ratlist who identified it for me.

We also found some sort of web /silk-making caterpillar underneath one of the leaves of the Hokkaido plant. I picked it off and dropped it in the pond as a fishy treat. *chuckle*

The ratty girls tore down their hammock during the night, and the baby ratties' ears are no longer plastered to the side of their heads.

The bunny babies have their ears open, and all but one (the mostly white one) of them have their eyes opened now.

The peppers are fruiting, and we've given away two miniature peppers to friends & neighbors. They taste great so I'm going to save some seeds and hope they weren't some sort of hybrid, even though it is likely that they are. Either way I'll have some good yellow peppers next year. *grin*

We've been hand polinating the heck out of the hokkaido plant and we're seeing baby fruits already. This is our first squash to flower so we don't have to worry about preventing cross-polination of the fruits for seed saving until another squash starts flowering, which looks like it could be any day with all of the buds we have coming up on some of the plants.

We decided to plant some of the tomatoes in the greenhouse (uncovered at this time) for the summer with the express idea of covering it and adding artificial sunlight come fall to encourage continued production (hopefully) throughout the winter. (Wouldn't it be nice?) Put about 8 plants into the ground, along with the dead baby rats for fertilizer (circle of life must continue). We;ll likely put even more in tomorrow. It sure would be nice if we could find some nice dirt somewhere, we're running out! I think it looks better with eyes instead of camera. *sigh* Ah well.


The girls are off with grandma again, as of this afternoon. They're going to miss going to the great race and looking at all the cars, but that's the decision they made. They're going karaoke again (It just finally started back up after a month-long hiatus) We'll probably have them back either late tomorrow night (unlikely with my mother's track record) or before noon on Friday. No worries though, It'll give us more of a chance to get everything packed and ready for the camping trip. *grin*

I'm paying all my bills early this month so that I will not have to worry about them when we head out.

Behold! The great flaming tiki goddess of fertility! Ph34r me! (and rejoice in the bounty of the harvest too of course) *giggle* Shadowplay is fun stuff.